The Things Your Mother Did
by wneleh
Summary: Kanaan decides fruit make a perfectly adequate dinner. A story written in response to SGA 5x08 'The Queen.'


The Things Your Mother Did

by Helen W.

"Daddy, when's Mommy coming home?"

Kanaan scooped up his elder daughter and held the child so that they were nose-to-nose. "Three more days, Kali."

His elder son, Torren, who had been on Kali duty, trotted into the kitchen. "Come on, Kali, let Dad and Guzen finish making dinner while we get the rest of the garden weeded."

"I want to help Daddy!" said Kali. "Guzen can weed with Torren."

"Nooooo!" cried Guzen, dropping the tubar he was peeling onto the floor, the better to swing his arms about. "It's my turn to help cook. You just think you can make all the rules because you're the only girl here. Daddy! It's no fair!"

Kanaan, with some difficulty, extracted himself from Kali and took away Guzen's paring knife. "I didn't say you had to go weed," he said. "Kali and Torren are working in the garden until supper, and you and I are cooking."

"But Kali ALWAYS gets her way when Mommy's not here," said Guzen.

Torren picked up the tubar and rinsed it with a couple of splashes from the pump, then looked at it closely. "You're doing a lousy job," he said to his younger brother. "You left half the peel over here, and you dug too deep on the other side."

"Let me! I can do it!" squealed Kali as Guzen (thankfully disarmed, Kanaan gave himself points for that) ran at Torren and kicked him in the shin.

"Stop it!" Kanaan found himself yelling. "No fighting, especially not in the kitchen!"

Torren was now hopping dramatically, holding his left leg in a way that could not possibly be of any use.

"I didn't mean to, I tripped and he was in the way," said Guzen.

"Are you going to punish them both?" asked Kali. "Do I get to peel now?"

Three days until Teyla and Baby Martya walked back through the ring of the ancestors.

What would Teyla do if she was here now?

Kanaan took a sharp, intentional breath, held it a moment, then stepped to Guzen and drew him close. "Dinner can wait," he said. "The weeds can wait. Let's go outside into the orchard where it's cooler. Torren, extinguish the flames please."

Kanaan picked the three ripest fruits he could find and handed them to his children, then chose a less perfect specimen for himself. Guzen launched into his with the most ferocity; he must have been very hungry.

"I don't see why Mommy had to leave us," Guzen said as he rotated his piece to get a better angle of attack. "Why couldn't we all go?"

It was something Guzen had asked frequently, and Kanaan gave his usual answer. "It was important to your mother to witness the marriage of her friend Laura on Earth, and she wanted to see other old friends as well. But I couldn't be away during the harvest."

"But we could have gone," said Guzen. "You don't need us here! At least not me and Kali!"

Every other time they'd covered this ground, Kanaan had steered the conversation to other topics. Instead, this time he said, "I - don't trust the Earth people. Not with all of you."

The Earth people, the Wraith awakeners. He'd have made them pay, or died trying, if Teyla had asked it of him. But instead Teyla had urged that they accept alliance; and of course Kanaan had given her, if not the Earthers, his full support.

"Wasn't I born among them?" asked Torren.

"Not exactly."

Where had he been while Teyla was birthing their eldest?

His memories from so much of that time - that dreadful time he could not even put a name to - were confused, shaded, out of order. Would he have killed Teyla if he'd found her there, on the floor as she must have been, with only the Earth scientist, Rodney McKay, for aid? Teyla had assured him again and again that, even when fouled by the wraith's blood in him, he had only helped her. But he had never believed her.

"Why did Martya get to go to Earth, if it's dangerous?" asked Guzen.

"Because Mommy would never leave a baby!" said Kali, maybe a little proud that she hadn't fallen into that category herself.

How many times had he stood with Torren, watching Teyla walk through the ring of the ancestors, not knowing if she would be gone for an hour or a day or a week, whether she'd come back at all?

And when he'd seen her altered into Wraith form, by her own request… he knew it was not as it had been for him, but knowing and believing were different things. How close he'd come to fleeing with Torren, or placing his son with their people and then fleeing alone. He'd felt so betrayed - how could she dirty herself so?

But he'd stayed; and when, finally, she had emerged from the healing machinery and reached for him, he knew he could never leave. "I think I am beginning to understand what it was like for you, all those months with Michael," she'd said.

He'd doubted it. But with both of them now dirtied and made clean, he'd realized that it might be possible for her to love him again. And, eventually, she had.

"Can I have another one?" asked Kali, and Kanaan found himself back in the orchard. Kali was considering a larger tree very seriously, perhaps trying to figure out whether she could get away with climbing up to where the ripest fruits were.

"It will spoil your dinner," said Torren.

"It can BE our dinner," said Guzen, and Kanaan decided that that was not a bad idea, actually.

"There's something bad about how I was born, isn't there?" asked Torren a bit later, softly, while Kali and Guzen were chasing each other through the trees.

"Bad, no… when a healthy child is born, it is never bad," said Kanaan. "But… it was during the great war, and…"

"And you were fighting the Wraith!"

"Not exactly," said Kanaan. "Your mother was the fighter - but you know that!"

"Even when I was being born?"

"Even then," said Kanaan. He sighed. "Kali, Guzen, come here!" he called. "Settle down. It's time for me to tell you about… about the great war, how it was for me and our people, and the things your mother did."

THE END

All feedback welcomed, here, or to helenw at murphnet dot org.


End file.
